Exploring Life & Business with Venkatesh Sankaran of Saguna Consulting and HUGENX

Today we’d like to introduce you to Venkatesh Sankaran.

Hi Venkatesh, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am engineer and MBA from Mumbai, India. Worked in large organizations like IBM in India before coming to the USA in 2001. I landed in New York with my wife and my 3 year old daughter, few months after 9/11 and it wasn’t necessarily the right time.
One thing led to the other and I moved to Orange County in Southern California in 2005; and in 2016 I founded my software companies.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely wasn’t a smooth ride. Coming to NY in November 2001 and adjusting wasn’t easy.
Then the market crash in 2003 and 2008 left me jobless multiple times with struggles to find the next employer who file my work visa. Green card took almost 14 years which is quite a long time.
With single income and managing a family of four wasn’t quite easy.
Still with all the hardships, with my wife’s strong emotional backing, I quit my job in 2016 to start the two companies. Few friends did help financially and provided the support necessary, but still it was though. With no insurance, no bank balance and card maxed out I managed to pull it through.
We had to sell our condo and move to a rental to fund the business and personal expenses.
And right when we did that, Covid hit.

This was the turning point. My businesses did extremely well during Covid and we could bounce back to normalcy and managed to gift a house to my wife.
Now with 2 companies running fine and growing and both kids graduated from college, I mentor entrepreneurs and guide them through their journey

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Saguna Consulting is a business, technology and AI consulting company. We build software products for large companies ot startups. We provide end to end solutions to any technology needs for the enterprises.

HUGENX is a lab information system. A software product and solution for testing labs, specializing in chronic disease diagnostic testing.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Feeling of contentment and being able to sleep peacefully each night